The Fringe of Leaves

by Patrick White

  Round them shimmered the light, the sand, and farther back, the darker, proprietary trees. Where the beach rose higher, to encroach on the forest, great mattresses of sand, far removed from the attentions of the tides, were quilted and buttoned down by vines, a variety of convolvulus, its furled trumpets of a pale mauve. Mrs Roxburgh might have thrown herself down on the vine-embroidered sand had it not burnt her so intensely, even through the soles of her dilapidated boots.

  She was, besides, growing conscious of a smell, of more, an obscene stink, and saw that she was squelching her way towards the putrefying carcase of what she took to be a kangaroo.

  ‘Phoo!’ she cried; then her wits took over. ‘Can it be used, though? There’s plenty game that stinks as high on the best-kept tables.’

  Hunger effected it quicker than it might have been. Mr Courtney succeeded in coaxing fire out of some dry twigs and vine with the help of flint and steel he had found in a shammy-leather bag strung round the late Spurgeon’s neck. Roasting somewhat quenched the stink of putrefying flesh, and in those who waited, greed quickened into ecstasy.

  There was not one who failed to claim his portion. The meat tasted gamey, as Mrs Roxburgh had foreseen, and was singed-raw rather than cooked. But Mr Roxburgh declared he had never tasted a more palatable dish, ignoring the frizzled maggot or two he scraped off with a burnt finger, and sat there when he was finished, sucking at a piece of hide as though he could not bear to part with it.

  One of the men added to their comfort by discovering during a short reconnaissance of the adjacent forest several pools of only slightly brackish water, to which the party trudged, and scooped water by the handful, or lay with their faces in it, sucking up injudicious draughts. Mrs Roxburgh contemplated bathing her face and hands, for the stench of rotten kangaroo had been added to the smell of salt grime accumulated over weeks spent in an open boat, but on glancing round at her companions she suspected that such behaviour might appear ostentatious, and in any case, it could produce only superfical results. Since her return to land she had become aware of whiffs given off by wet clothes and the body inside them.

  Seeing that evening was approaching it was decided to camp beside the water-holes, which in normal picnic circumstances would have provided an admirably restful setting, upon an upholstery of moss, inside this vast green marquee, its sides just visibly in motion as a breeze stirred the creepers slung from somewhere high above. The scene lacked only the coachman and a footman to produce the hampers.

  Now at any rate Mr Roxburgh would have given thanks, in peace and quiet, after settling himself against a hummock, hand in hand with his dear wife, some little way apart from the others, had it not been for a curious noise, of animal gibbering, or human chatter, slight at first, then sawing louder into the silence.

  Every head among them was raised as though functioning on sadly rusted springs, and there on a rise in the middle distance appeared one, three, half-a-dozen savages, not entirely naked, for each wore a kind of primitive cloth draped from a shoulder, across the body, and over his private parts. The natives were armed besides, with spears, and other warlike implements, all probably of wood; only their dark skins had the glint of ominous metal.

  The two parties remained watching each other an unconscionable time before the blacks silently melted away among the shadows.

  As soon as it was felt that the aboriginals had removed to a safe distance, the voice of speculation raised itself in the white camp: it was wondered what kind of dirty work the ‘customers’ would get up to.

  Captain Purdew was of the opinion that ‘Christian advances should meet with Christian results,’ but sighed and added, ‘unless our sins are so heavy they will weigh against us.’ In any event, he sought to impress upon his command to refrain from opening fire on those who were no more than ‘natural innocents’.

  Despite the captain’s injunctions, Mr Courtney and one of his men decided on their own account to overhaul the armoury of two muskets and a pistol, all probably unserviceable from exposure in the boat. They went so far as to load the weapons in case of an ambush during the night, and discouraged those who were in favour of kindling a fire to rouse their lowered spirits.

  When he had exhausted his surprise at the black intrusion, and disposed of a dubious aesthetic pleasure in their muscular forms and luminous skins, Mr Roxburgh began to find the whole issue a tedious one. Reality had always come and gone in his presence with startling suddenness, and never more capriciously than since the wreck of Bristol Maid. So he could take but a fitful interest in the question of defence. His real, sustaining, and sustained life would only begin again on his return to the library at ‘Birdlip House’.

  Even Mrs Roxburgh was inclined to look upon the loading of firearms by Mr Courtney and his henchman as an example of the games men-as-boys see it their duty to play. She lowered her eyes at last, and with a blade of grass helped an ant struggle out of a depression in the moss.

  Peace and drowsiness began to prevail; an idyll might have been reinstated but for the cold creeping on them through the trees, and if almost every member of the party had not been racked by diarrhoea. There was a continual tramping through the undergrowth and silence, in which a private condition was made distressingly audible.

  ‘That infernal kangaroo!’ Mr Roxburgh groaned at one stage. ‘Why do you suppose you were spared, Ellen?’

  ‘Who am I to explain? Unless I swilled less of that water than some of you others.’

  Mr Roxburgh came to the conclusion that it was minerals dissolved in the water, and not the gamey kangaroo, which had caused their indisposition.

  But he seemed to hold it against her that she had not suffered, and during the night when his spirits were at their lowest, confessed, ‘I’ve often thought that I’d willingly die—there is not all that much to live for—but have wondered how you would manage without me.’

  Mrs Roxburgh pretended she had fallen asleep.

  In the morning the party, most of them considerably weakened, rose without encouragement before the light.

  Captain Purdew—or was it Mr Courtney? decided they should return to the beach and there set course for Moreton Bay, which they must reach eventually on foot if indeed they had landed on the mainland and not an island.

  Captain Purdew’s wits took a turn for the worse when it came to abandoning the incapacitated long-boat. Like Bristol Maid it lodged in his conscience and would probably fester there for as long as he lived.

  Whereas Mrs Roxburgh, who glanced back once as they trudged along the beach, resolved to put it out of her mind, together with the sufferings she had endured while confined to its wretched shell. Or had she the power to govern her thoughts? She must cultivate a strength of will to equal that of her sturdy body. The latter mercifully withstood every material imposition; for her clothes were weighing her down, and her husband dragged on the arm she had offered as a support in his debility.

  So they struggled on, the men for the most part barefoot, and every one of them a shambles of appearance and behaviour.

  ‘Halfway to Norwich the horse lay down …’ Captain Purdew was heard to whimper.

  The sun rose, to batter them about the head and shoulders. At one point the woman lowered her glance as though unable any longer to face the glare, and the rings she was wearing flashed back an ironic message. For a few steps she closed her eyes. Patterned with salt and sweat, her dark clothes might have been drawing her under, to depths from which she had but dreamt that she was delivered.

  As for Mr Roxburgh, he had abandoned his overcoat and jacket (his boots had abandoned him) but was still wearing his waistcoat in the heat of the day to ensure safe carriage of the Elzevir Virgil buttoned inside.

  Mrs Roxburgh could have cried for her husband’s long narrow feet: pale and cold according to her memory, they were now ablaze.

  From the sun’s position it must have been the middle of the day, when the most torpid mind was compelled to take notice, by a hissing sound followed by a marked
thud. A spear had planted itself obliquely in the sand a few feet ahead of Mr Courtney and the seaman who were leading the procession. The spear had scarcely ceased vibrating when a second grazed Captain Purdew’s left shoulder, tearing the shirt and letting a trickle of blood.

  Several of the crew started shouting, to assert their courage or disguise their fear, as Mr Courtney and his companion, who were in possession of the firearms, headed in the direction of some dunes to landward where fifteen to sixteen natives were seen to have congregated, their gibberish accompanied by overtly hostile gestures.

  Above the pain and shock Captain Purdew must have been suffering from his wound, he was made frantic by the prospect of his subordinates committing violence. ‘Ned! Frank!’ He shambled forward, emotion causing him to spit so inordinately that he sprayed Mrs Roxburgh’s face in passing. ‘We’ll do no good by spilling blood!’

  ‘Nor by palaverin’, neether!’ an anonymous voice rejoined.

  The first officer and the promoted seaman were taking aim with a precision which fitted the sudden stillness.

  A single report from one of the guns sounded horrendous to those who were listening for it; the second weapon played dead, to the fury of the seaman who had been counting upon his moment of glory.

  The savages emitted horrid shrieks as one of their number fell, jerking and convulsed, and disappeared from sight amongst the dunes.

  The captain was quite demented. ‘We’ll pay for it, I tell you!’ he shouted.

  He was, in fact, the one who did, for the next instant a spear was twangling in his ribs. It went in as though he were scarcely a man, or if he were, nobody they had ever known. As he toppled over he conspired with fate by driving the spear deeper in.

  There were howls from the blacks, and the shouting of incensed, helpless sailors.

  For the second time Mr Courtney took aim, but his gesture produced no more than silence.

  Ellen Gluyas watched the bloodstain widening on the sand. There had not been so much blood since Pa and will slaughtered the calf during their lodger’s interminable stay.

  Now she too, was interminable, transfixed by time as painfully and mercilessly as by any spear. She, the practical one, and a woman, should tear herself free and rush back into life—to do something.

  But it was Mr Roxburgh who ran forward, to do what only God could know. Here he was, bestirring himself at least, in the manner expected of the male sex. Into action! He felt elated, as well as frightened, and full of disbelief in his undertaking. (It was not, however, an uncommon reaction to his own unlikelihood.)

  He was several yards from the dying man when Mrs Roxburgh became aware of a terrible whooshing, like the beating of giant wings, infernal in that they were bearing down upon her more than any other being. Indeed, nothing more personal had happened to her in the whole of her life. For a spear, she saw, had struck her husband; it was hanging from his neck, long and black, giving him a lopsided look.

  ‘Awwwh!’ Ellen Gluyas cried out from what was again an ignorant and helpless girlhood.

  Austin Roxburgh was keeling over. On reaching the sand his body would have re-asserted itself, but the attempt petered out in the parody of a landed shrimp.

  ‘Oh, no! No, no!’ It was the little skipping motion, of defeat in the attempt, which freed her; it was too piteous, as though all the children she had failed to rear were gesticulating for her help.

  When she reached his side his eyes were closed, pulses could be seen palpitating beneath the skin, while the long black spear led a malignant life of its own.

  At least there was no sign of blood.

  ‘Oh, my husband—my darling!’ She was blubbering, bellowing, herself the calf with the knife at its throat.

  He opened his eyes. ‘Ellen, you are different. The light … or the brim of that … huge … country… hat. Raise it, please … so that I can see …

  In her desperation she seized the spear and dragged at it, and it came away through the gristle in his neck. At once blood gushed out of the wound, as well as from the nostrils and mouth.

  She fell on her knees.

  ‘I forgot,’ he said, rising for a moment above the tide in which he was drowning. ‘Pray for me, Ellen.’

  She could not, would never pray again. ‘Oh, no, Lord! Why are we born, then?’

  The blood was running warm and sticky over her hands. Round the mouth, and on one smeared temple, more transparent than she had ever seen it, flies were crowding in black clots, greedy for the least speck of crimson before the sun dried the virtue out of it.

  Huddled on the sand beside a husband with whom the surviving link was his dried blood, Mrs Roxburgh had taken refuge inside the tent of matted hair which, hanging down, could be used to protect her face from the flies, as well as screen her to some extent from what might provoke a further wrench of anguish.

  Had she been a free agent she would have chosen just then to succumb to the heat, the weight of her clothes, and numbness of mind, but heard a shot followed by an outburst of laughter, and raised the curtain enough to discover the reason why the second incongruous explosion should follow so closely upon the first.

  The men, it appeared, had begun digging a trench in the sand in which to bury their late captain, scratching with their hands alone in a frenzy of application to create the illusion that they were occupied positively, while hoping that the officer who had joined them at their work might come up with some plan to reduce their plight. During it all, a youth named Bob Adams who had a record as a sawney, started digging with the butt of one of the impotent muskets. Which went off. Mr Courtney’s ally, Frank Runcie, cursed fearfully, and the officer himself used every word of a vocabulary to which his blunted authority entitled him.

  It was a relief for the others to laugh. ‘At any rate, nobody stopped it!’ one fellow guffawed, and some of the others persisted in labouring the joke.

  When Mrs Roxburgh glanced again, the sailors and officer had finished their game of sandcastles: Captain Purdew was decently disposed of, his tomb decorated with a pattern of the hand-prints of those who had shared his last trials. It did, however, face them with the problem of how to deal with the passenger whose wife sat mourning over him. Not one of them would have cared to intrude on the lady’s grief, least of all Mr Courtney, whose duty it was to take the lead and offer some form of condolence.

  Mrs Roxburgh made no attempt to help, simply because she could not have been helped.

  A solution was provided by the blacks’ return, the more dignified among them striding directly towards their objective, others capering and play-acting. The party of ineffectual whites was soon surrounded by the troop of blacks, all sinew, stench, and exultant in their mastery. One of them ripped the shirt off Mr Courtney, another the belt from Runcie’s waist.

  Mrs Roxburgh might have felt more alarmed had any of their play concerned herself, but the natives seemed intent on ignoring a mere woman seated by her husband’s corpse. In the circumstances, she no longer felt constrained to turn her head or hide behind her hair. To the spectator, what was happening now was far less incredible or terrifying than the events leading up to it.

  The blacks had begun stripping their captives garment by garment. One fellow’s skin was such a glaring white, the tuft of hair below his belly flared up like a burning bush. Mr Courtney’s testicles were long, slender, pathetic in their defencelessness. Because she had never been faced with a naked man, Mrs Roxburgh at this point looked away, and instead caught sight of her husband’s naked feet.

  She hung her head, and wept for the one she had failed in the end to protect.

  After much laughter and caracoling as they bore away their spoils into the scrub, the blacks returned and started driving their white herd, by thwacks and prodding, into the dense hinterland.

  Watching her companions disappearing from sight, Mrs Roxburgh wondered what she could expect—probably very little, at best the luxury of lying down to putrefy beside her dead husband.

  While the sun s
ank lower the landscape was subjected to a tyrannical beauty of deeper blue, slashed green, and flamingo feathers. She who had been reared among watercolours whimpered at this sudden opulence, the saliva running down her chin. There was almost nothing she might risk looking at, least of all her husband’s feet, austerely pointed at the luxuriant sky.

  When again she heard voices and saw that some black women were approaching. A high chatter interspersed with laughter suggested a kind of game: the words tossed by the women into the cooling air could have been substitutes for a ball. This, Ellen Roxburgh sensed, was the beginning of her martyrdom.

  The females advanced, six or seven of them, from hags to nubile girls. On arriving within a few yards of the stranger, one of the girls bent down, picked up a handful of sand, and flung it in the white woman’s face.

  Mrs Roxburgh barely flinched, not because sustained by strength of will, but because the spirit had gone out of her. She was perhaps fortunate, in that a passive object can endure more than a human being.

  Her tormentors were convulsed by their companion’s inspiration, and several others followed suit throwing sand, until one more audacious member of their set darted forward and dragged the prisoner to her feet.

  Ellen Gluyas had not encountered a more unlikely situation since forced as a bride to face the drawing-rooms of Cheltenham. The difference in the present was that she had grown numb to hurt, and that those she had loved and wished to please could no longer be offended by her lapses in behaviour or her scarecrow person.

  The party of women strolled round her in amazement at the spectacle; one or two were moved to pull her hair, unlike their own which had been hacked off within a few inches of the roots; the large woman with heavy jowls who had yanked her to her feet, caught sight of and started fingering her rings, their stones not entirely dulled by grime.

  ‘Take them if you want,’ Mrs Roxburgh insisted, and with no thought for whether she might be understood. ‘They no longer have any value for me. Do, please, take them. Only leave me my wedding ring.’